


Returning

by harcourt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Creepypasta, Gen, Horror, I wrote this for the kinkmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 07:17:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/13316.html?thread=30705924#t30705924">this prompt</a>, based on <a href="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lybst0lJXL1r1x8tdo1_1280.jpg">this creepypasta</a>.</p><p>While under the influence of Loki's scepter, Clint keeps finding strange notes telling him to <i>wake up</i> and isn't quite sure what to make of them.</p><p>And they keep appearing.</p><p> </p><p>(relevant creepypasta also in fic top notes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Returning

**Author's Note:**

> "It has been reported that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not _wake up_. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to _wake up_ was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to _wake up_. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and _**please wake up**_."

"I've been here a bit long for hazing, don't you think?" Clint asks, over the top of the folder, giving Phil an amused-annoyed-curious look. Phil looks up from the form he's filing out and gives him his own version of the look, but with an extra ounce of question thrown in.

"What?" he says, pen still, hovering over the small stack of papers in front of him. His face is full of _don't waste my time, Barton_. He should be in a fucking acting class. Or at least in undercover ops.

Clint holds his gaze for a few seconds, to see if he's going to default on his bluff but Phil returns the look steadily. Maybe with a bit of worry creeping into his face. 

"All right," Clint says, and pushes his chair back, "Fine. Play it your way. You've never been one of the clowns before, but far be it from me to ruin your fun. Let me just say, I'm honored to be your first victim, even if it's kind of a sad effort. Better luck next time?"

Phil's look doesn't change. Maybe the furrow between his brows gets a bit deeper. "Barton," he starts, but Clint's already on his feet, folder closed and in hand.

"No, no. Don't walk it back. The key to _really_ messing with someone is commitment. Don't worry. You'll get it. I just wouldn't try this shit on Nat, maybe," he says, and exits the office with more grace and less peeve than he feels. 

Out in hall, he stops to open the folder and take another peek at the paperwork inside, where instead of _sign here_ , the Coulson-tidy post it--in purple. The joker was _really_ making an effort--had hurried letters reading _Wake up, Clint_.

He really should give himself more time to set these things up. The obvious haste was un-Coulson-like.

And okay, maybe he'd zoned out a little bit-- _a little bit_ \--while on guard duty, but watching Eric Selvig poke at a shiny glowing box didn't exactly get the adrenaline pumping.

Hopefully, sarcastic joker Phil wouldn't last long. Steady, dress-you-down-with-an-even-gaze Phil wasn't the greatest thing to be faced with in the world, but it was a far cry better than this fake innocence bullshit. 

"Just _tell_ me when I'm screwing up," Clint tells the hall, still glaring at the post-it. "Jeez."

Morse, walking by with a paper cup in her hand, glances over and salutes him with her coffee. Says, "Screwin' up, Clint," cheerfully and like she's doing him a favor. Clint transfers his glare.

"Shut up, Bobbi"

\-----

He's not in the mood for it after his next mission, where he doesn't so much fall asleep or zone out as he gets shot in the chest--thankfully saved by his body armor--and knocked over, and whacks his head good on the way down. 

He wakes up on a gurney in the belly of a SHIELD transport plane with Sitwell hovering over him and a royal pounding headache. 

"How do you feel?" Sitwell asks, keeping him down when he tries to drunkenly push himself up, "Nausea, double vision?" Clint lets himself he held down, but raises a hand to feel carefully at the goose egg behind one ear, his knuckles brushing the cold of an icepack.

"Head," he slurs, and closes his eyes. Sitwell pops his fingers against his cheek, obnoxiously.

"Stay awake, Barton. You can sleep when medical has you under observation."

"Uhn,' Clint agrees, but passes back out anyway. 

He wakes up to fluorescent lights and a single foil balloon, purple with pink sparkles and yellow letters reading _fucked up again_ , the un-official SHIELD get-well-soon balloon that some smart aleck had gotten made up last year and still had a drawer full of. Clint would roll his eyes, but his vision was swimming enough already. 

Nat lets him stew for two days, then springs him. He leaves the balloon for Agent Parrish, who was shot in the leg and thigh, telling him, "Here. Have another fuck-up balloon to go with your fuck-up balloon." They're neither of them floating anymore, so they just sit in the visitor chair like a couple of shiny throw pillows, rolling slightly in the breeze from the air conditioner.

"Well, I was shot twice after all," Parrish allows, with his usual what-the-fuck-ever easy going attitude. Clint mock-salutes him and lets Natasha steer him home to his quarters. 

Where he finds a note on his desk, _Wake up_ scrawled across the paper in scratchy letters, like the pen was going dry.

It had to be Nat. She's the only one with easy access to his room. The only one whose break-in he wouldn't report like _that_. Clint frowns and picks it up, about to ask Nat if she was worried about him or in cahoots with Phil. About to say, _I was almost really hurt you know_ , to make her--and maybe Coulson--feel just a little bit bad for messing with him, but when he turns she's already gone.

"It doesn't make you mysterious just 'cause you do that," Clint tells the empty doorway, "There's not much mystery after I've seen you _naked_."

"Creeper!" someone yells from the hall. Clint slams his door.

\-----

 _Please wake up_ , he finds in his locker, on a folded piece of yellow paper. A corner of torn-off legal pad. 

"I think I have a stalker," he tells Natasha, who _pff_ s and says, "You wish."

"That or someone in accounting with poor social skills is in love with me."

"You wish," Natasha says again, and steals his desert. He lets her. 

Or the prank is spreading. It isn't funny any more.

\----

"Was this you?" he asks Coulson, tossing the scrap of legal pad at him, "Because it looks like your taste in stationary."

Phil glances at it, "Wake up," he reads, and slides it back. "Nefarious."

"I'm serious. This is _stupid_ , and you started it, so you stop it." 

Phil gives him his steady Coulson look, but Clint holds his ground, glaring back. "What are you talking about?" he asks, with just the slightest edge of impatience. 

"Wake up? The post-it in the folder? The 'sign here' that wasn't?"

"I didn't--What?" Phil says, then, more cautiously, "Have you been sleeping Clint?"

"Apparently that's what everyone's fucking problem is. I get it, okay? I got a bit bored on the Selvig thing. But I was still _paying attention_ , and it won't happen again."

"Clint, you're an exceptional agent," Phil starts, which is his prelude to saying things that Clint doesn't want to hear.

"I didn't screw up," he snaps.

"No," Phil says, "But maybe you should talk to somebody. "

"I'm talking to _you_. Stop screwing with me."

"Clint," Phil says, and the furrow in his brow re-appears, "I'm not screwing with you."

\-----

Clint doesn't believe him until he wakes up and finds _wake up wake up wake up_ scrawled on the inside of his closet door in small but hurried letters, the repetition ending in a scrape of marker ink like the writer was torn unwillingly away from their task.

There isn't anyone who could have done it. It hadn't been there when he'd gone to bed last night, and there's no way anyone could have come into his quarters without waking him. 

Clint gets dressed. He doesn't mention the new note, not even to Nat.

\-----

The next mission goes south which is two out of two and a pretty shit record for Clint. Especially when he has Nat on his team. They ride back home in silence, not looking at each other even though they do fall asleep on each other, in an exhausted, miserable heap in the back of the transport. 

Debrief is mercifully short, and when Clint finds _You have to wake up_ , shuffled in with his post-mission directions, he keeps his face even and pretends not to notice.

He does notice that no one is particularly looking at him. No one is watching, gauging his reaction. 

It would be a sick joke anyway, at this point. In a way, he's a little relieved that it doesn't seem to be a prank. It might mean that he's going nuts, but at least his workmates aren't trying to psychologically torture him. 

At least it means _Phil_ isn't trying to torture him.

\-----

Clint practices until it feel like his arms are about to come off, and the next day does it again, and then again until he sees the shooting range behind his eyelids when he tries to sleep and feels the thrum of bowstring tension in his fingers, no matter what he's dreaming. 

Until he hallucinates the rhythm of draw-release- _thump_ , draw-release- _thump_ in quiet moments, and finds himself tensing and relaxing as if he _were_ shooting even when he's just in the cafeteria with Nat or in a meeting.

He finds himself twitching when he tries to go to sleep, fingers jerking as if they were trying to handle arrows.

The next mission is still a wash. He misses twice.

\-----

"Have a fuck-up balloon to go with your fuck-up balloon," Parrish says, leaning in his doorway and on a crutch, batting the thing into the room with his free hand. Clint blinks blearily and rubs his head. It hurts like fuck.

"Well," he says, grumpy and slurring a little, "I did miss twice."

\-----

Phil hands him a file, and Clint opens it slowly. Cautiously. Phil gives him a funny look, but there's nothing inside it but the usual typed-up version of his report and a spaces for him to add corrections and sign off on it. The usual post-it says _sign here_. Clint doesn't really need the direction, but paperwork makes him nervous, so Phil's continued adding it. 

"Three out of three crap-ups," Clint says, relieved at the lack of disturbing missives, and draws a line through the space marked _additions/corrections_ , "We have a fuck-up hattrick."

"You missed," Phil tells him, and rests his chin on folded hands, not steepling them like a villain the way Fury does. Clint twitches and doesn't look up. Pretends to be involved with scribbling his signature.

"You missed twice."

Clint finishes scrawling _Barton_ , just as Phil says that and his hand clenches on the pen. He leaves a drag of ink after the _N_. "I know," he says, and, "I put in the hours. I don't know--"

"You need to wake up, Clint," Phil says, and Clint jerks his head up from printing _Clint Barton_ under his signature.

"What?" His voice is a terrified, breathy gasp, even to himself. He clears his throat and repeats, "What did you say?" in a more normal tone. Phil's head tilts a little.

"It's not all about practice hours," Phil clarifies, "Putting in whole days isn't going to help. I think you might need some time."

"I don't need time--" Clint starts, but Phil says, "You're an exceptional agent--"

"Oh, for god's sake." Clint snaps, "Just give it to me straight."

"Clint," Phil asks, gently, "What's going on?"

Clint frowns and doesn't say, _I think something's wrong with my head_ , and after a few minutes of silence, Phil hands him his copy of the report and waves him out.

\-----

When he gets back to his room, the first thing Clint does is hang up his jacket.

The second thing he does is pull his report back out and flatten it against the inside of his closet door. The scrape of ink after the _N_ in _Barton_ looks a lot like the one after _wake up wake up wake up_.

Clint crumples the report and slams the closet door. 

It's his own handwriting.

\-----

 _Please_ , he finds, scrawled in the margin of his mission notes, _wake up_. 

It's too late to do anything about it, so he blanks his expression and hands it to Sitwell anyway. Sitwell doesn't even seem to notice.

\-----

Mission four. Clint misses once. Natasha isn't there to watch him puke all the way home, sick from gas that was released in the lab compound they'd been infiltrating. He's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. He's pretty sure he'd careened into a wall when the disorientation had hit, and she's sure to have a thing or two to say about it and his head hurts too much to be in the mood for a lecture.

"Fuck up," Clint tells Parrish, who is putting pressure on his thigh, to stop the bleeding.

"Don't worry," Parrish says, easy going like he's not in any pain at all, "at least you'll get a balloon."

\-----

 _Wake up_ , Clint finds on the napkin that comes with his lunch tray. The ink has bled on the thin paper, leaving spidery halos around the letters. He spills his water onto it and watches the letters run into shapeless ghosts of themselves. When Nat comes, he smiles at her and asks, "Come to spring me?"

"Yep," she says, "so you can leave your balloon with Parrish before all the helium goes out of it."

\-----

"You missed," Phil tells him, pushing a folder across the table.

"I know," Clint says wearily, "I screwed up."

Phil hands him a pen, smiling crookedly, "It's not about ability, Clint. We know you have ability. You're an exceptional agent, but you can't fight everything. Maybe you just need a break."

"I'll consider it," Clint says, and flips open the file. Signs his name, same as always. 

\-----

 _Wake up_ is multiplying on the inside of his closet door. There's another set of three now, set at a different angle, messier, like it was done in even more of a hurry. Clint tries not to hyperventilate.

Instead, he takes all of his clothes out and hangs them over a chair. Then he locks the closet and sets the chair against it. 

\-----

After that, _wake up_ moves to his locker door and adds a _please_. It's also in all-caps. _PLEASE WAKE UP_. Clint scrubs at it, but it has no effect. Worse, when he gives up and just lets the door swing open as he grabs his things, no one seems to notice the message. 

\-----

Mission. Disaster. It's life. 

Clint slouches against the wall in medical and blinks, watching lights dance in his vision each time. Parrish is saying, "Shot twice, ladies," trying to impress the un-impressable nurses.

Clint wishes he'd shut up.

\-----

"It's okay," Phil tells him, handing him a pen, "You missed on purpose. You're an exceptional agent." Clint waits for the rest, but that's all there is, other than Phil smiling in what might be approval, might be pride.

Might be both.

It's weird.

"Want a fuck-up balloon?" Clint asks him, because Parrish was gone by the time Nat had sprung him and as the last agent in medical, he's ended up with everyone's. Phil snorts.

"It's a bit late for a balloon," he says, "Don't you think?"

Clint's not sure that that means, so he signs the report, prints his name under it, and leaves.

\-----

 _Wake up_ , it says, when Clint tries to buy a second hand book. It's pencil and neat and in the upper corner where it should say _2.50_ or _3.00_. He throws it back to the pile and goes to find Nat, who's two doors down in a Russian deli being choosy and authentic about salted fish or god knew what. 

"What do you think," she asks him, peering through the glass at the counter with her arms folded over her chest. It's completely unclear what she's talking about.

"Sure," Clint agrees, still with no idea, and Natasha smiles and asks for two ounces of something. She'll probably make him eat some, and say he choose it, but that's fine. It's sunny and warm and a nice day to be culinarily tortured.

A nice day to have off.

"It's good to have you back," Natasha says, bumping shoulders with him as they leave the deli. Clint _hmm_ -s, and gives her a look, because he wasn't gone _that_ long. It was just a regular mission. A cock-up, sure, but not really exceptional.

They stop for coffee. _Wake up_ is written on the paper placemat. Clint moves his silverware to cover it.

\-----

Mission. Disaster. Surgery.

When he wakes up there's still marks on him, annotations that probably mean something like _not this arm_. Clint tries not to think about it too hard. His head hurts. 

"I missed," he says, to the room at large, and hears Parrish say, "Fuck up." When he moves to scrub at his eyes, to try to clear away the bluish fog that seems to hang in them, there's smudged marker along his arm. It doesn't say _shooting arm_. It says, _you have to wake up now_. 

Clint spits on it as best he can with his mouth dry and feeling cottony, and scrubs it against his shoulder. His other hand can't move. It feels trapped or pinned. 

"Fuck up," Parrish says again, sounding distant, "You shot me twice." 

\-----

As soon as he's released, he goes to find Phil. Following procedure like a good little agent. They go through the whole folder signature pep-talk routine. At the end of it, Clint asks, "Where's Nat?"

Phil says, "On a mission. You know that," and looks a bit worried. 

"Oh," Clint says, and quickly adds, "Right. Yeah, I knew that. I guess I'm still kind of--"

"Asleep," Phil says, not as a question.

"Woozy," Clint says, and grabs his copy of the mission report and leaves.

\-----

Mission. Fuck up. Fuck-up balloon. 

Parrish says, "Thanks a lot, Barton."

Clint's head hurts. He feels like he's been slammed through a wall, cranium first. "I shot you twice," he says. 

"Well," Parrish says, chill as always, "only in the leg."

"Are you dead?" Clint asks. 

Parrish snorts, "Wake _up_ , Barton. It was just my _leg_."

\-----

Clint brings his balloon to Phil. Phil says, again, "It's a bit late for balloons, Clint, don't you think?"

He looks amused. It's not funny.

"Don't worry," Phil says, when he sees the look on his face, "It's not your fault."

\-----

The inside of his closet door is blank again, just about. Only the single _wake up_ written on it, at eye-level. Tidy and no nonsense. Clint sits on the end of his bed and considers it. 

'Seriously weird' covers a lot of things that go on at SHIELD, but not this. He wishes he'd kept notes, but all he has are the mission report copies. He pulls them out from the mess of his desk drawer and lays them over the bed.

The first starts, _Was watching Selvig, tesseract duty_. The second starts, _Tesseract duty_. The third starts, _On duty in the lab_. Under _additions/corrections_ they all say _wake up_.

Clint picks them up. Puts them down.

His head hurts.

\-----

When he takes them to Phil, Phil looks at them one-by-one, carefully, then sets them in a stack to the side and asks him very carefully, "Clint, have you been sleeping?"

He's about to make a snippy remark, when he realizes the answer is _yes_.

\-----

"You _are_ dead," he tells Parrish, finding him in medical, with his bandaged leg elevated. 

"It was just my leg," Parrish tells him, mildly, with Phil-like calm, "It wasn't your fault."

"I shot you," Clint says.

"Have a fuck-up balloon," Parrish says, like that's supposed to cheer him up, and grabs one by the string. It bounces a bit when he tosses it over, using the weight at the end of its string to make the throw.

"I--" Clint starts, and stops. Says, "I'm sorry."

"Eh," Parrish says with a shrug, "So you nicked an artery. It could happen to anyone. Thanks anyway for trying."

\----- 

"I missed," Clint tells Phil, "A few times."

"I know," Phil says, "I've been trying to tell you."

\-----

"Okay," Clint tells the message on the inside of his closet door. "I don't ask for a lot, but just give me this one thing, okay? Just this one."

\-----

Natasha asks him, "Coffee?" and Clint nods and follows her into the cafe.

Asks, "Are you dead? Did I--?" She gives him a lopsided smile and orders an espresso. He can't stand it. " _Nat_."

"How's your head?" she asks. 

It hurts, suddenly. Like being split open. Like he's had it slammed into a floor or two or two and a wall. His vision swims blue. " _Please_ , Nat."

"I'm not dead," she assures him, and pushes a menu at him. Clint pushes it aside. "Are you done, then?" she asks, and he nods. 

"Yeah."

"I'm not dead," she repeats, "I'll be there, Clint."

"Promise."

She doesn't, and that's fine because Natasha doesn't _make_ promises. She just leans across the little table to kiss his temple. 

Then she belts him a good one in the head.

\-----

Mission. Disaster. Everything is blue.

Natasha says, "Clint?" He can't move his arms.

"Clint, you're gonna be alright," she says. The room is small, with metal walls and helicarrier sparse. Everything is blue, and then it's not, and then everything slams back.

The tesseract activating. Shooting Fury, but sort-of missing. By Hawkeye standards of _missing_ , at least.

Going to sleep.

Being _put_ to sleep.

\-----

"Thanks" he tells Phil's grave, later. Much later, when it's all over. "For the. You know. The post-it. For starting it."

" _You_ woke up," Natasha tells him, from somewhere behind him, giving him space, "on your own."

"He kept trying to tell me," Clint says, even though he's probably not making sense. Natasha hums like she's following, though, so he doesn't bother trying to clarify anything. Eventually he says, "You helped, a little," and turns a little to smirk over at her. It feels brittle. 

Natasha shrugs, "Anytime you need me to hit you in the head, Barton, I'm more than available."

\-----

They have a mission. If any mission was going to be a dream, this one should be, because he's racing along behind Steve-fucking-Rogers, and then being flown eight stories up by Tony Stark, poster boy for everything previously out of Clint's reach.

"If I'm dreaming, you let me know now, self," he mutters, "before I get used to this," but the only answer he gets is Tony's obnoxious laugh as he sets him down on a roof.

"Everything okay, Monologue?" he asks. 

Clint checks his arrows. Says, "Fine," and draws, getting his first shot ready.

He hits everything.


End file.
